Customer Review: without sanctuary

As a white man over sixty, growing up in the Northeast, I was sheltered from the realities of racism by my surroundings. "Colored people" were simply not socially acceptable, thats all.
When you go through this book you will cringe and shutter. What reason and why would white people do this. Not only lynch but torture and maim before they allowed the subject to die, and often for no reason - just because it was Saturday night and people needed something to do. Truly a wakeup call for white America to reflect on what we were and really how far have we come.

Buy this book !

Z

Customer Review: Healing from the hurts of racism

This an extraordinary book.

My father, who was a civil rights activist, wore a button for years that said, "I read banned books." When he died, we made a bookmark with his photo on it wearing that button. When I read Without Sanctuary I used that bookmark. Living here in New York City I often ride the trains, and I like to read during these trips. I decided to take the cover off this book because I was worried about children and anyone else who was not ready to see these photos getting a glimpse of them. But I've talked to my friends at work, and I've even given them peeks of this book because I want so much for people to know about the period of our national history during which lynching occurred. Few people can stand to look.

I once went to a workshop for learning how to undo the effects of racism, which was mostly for people of color. I asked the workshop leader, "What can we white folks do to end our own racism?" He answered, "Put your face into the buzz-saw of racism, and hold it there until you heal." I am still, many years later, trying to follow that suggestion, and buying this book was part of my journey as a white person in acknowledging the racist legacy I inherited growing up in the US. Without Sanctuary puts your face into the ways that white society tried to terrorize and silence a large number of US citizens.

My family immigrated from Lithuania and other countries in Eastern Europe around the turn of the 1900s. As Jewish immigrants, many of them felt that they had nothing to do with slavery, and they certainly had their own problems coming here. My grandfather participated in union organizing with other Jewish workers, and my father turned towards the problems of poverty and racism in our city during the 1960s until his recent death. But I still feel we as a white family benefit from centuries of free labor in the US. The hard fact is, that as white immigrants we bought into the racist system that supported a middle class, or at least the intellectual lifestyle. Today I work as a public school teacher in the housing projects of Brooklyn, but I own my own house and I enjoy a middle class income.

Without Sanctuary reveals and reminds of us of that period following emancipation when white citizens still stood to gain economically by the silence and passivity of African American communities. That period, more than any other period of our history, conditioned us, under heavy terror, to accept the separation caused by so many years of slavery. Without Sanctuary is one of my buzz-saws, and I cherish it. And although no one I know can stand to look at it with me (yet), it is a healing device, because without understanding there cannot be reconciliation. Without pain there cannot be recovery. We as a people must face and feel our own history so that we can move forward to a world without racism.

The question you need to ask yourself before buying this book is, "Am I ready to heal?"

Thank you, to the folks who put together Without Sanctuary.

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